Author: marlenecondon@aol.com

Dark Skies

©Marlene A. Condon

April 5, 2019

 

Lights burning in broad daylight waste not only natural resources and your money, but also add pollution to the atmosphere that contributes to global warming. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

I started my journey to Charlottesville when I was seven. Living in a neighborhood not yet blighted by street lamps, I could spot on clear nights the steady glow of the nearby planets of the Solar System, as well as the moon that had not yet been visited by man. I was able to peer into deep space, observing in the black sky the dense band of stars making up the disk of our own galaxy (the Milky Way), as well as scintillating distant galaxies and nearby stars. These celestial objects so thoroughly enthralled me that I decided at this young age to become an astronomer.

About eighteen years later, as I was working towards my physics degree, I learned of the Summer Student Research Program offered by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville. Although there were very few assistantships available, I applied. Happily, I was chosen to come here to do research with an astronomer that summer, and the rest—as they say—is history!

The ability to view the night sky when I was very young determined my direction in life. Today the night sky is, for most children, an exercise in futility. They may know it’s out there somewhere, but they are highly unlikely to see much of it from their own back yards, as I was able to do. For them, the night sky exists only in theory.

I moved permanently to the Charlottes-ville area 40 years ago, and over that time I’ve witnessed the decline in one’s ability to view the night sky, thanks to more and more lights sending their rays skyward. From my home in a rural area northwest of Crozet, I see—especially on cloudy nights—a tremendous glow when I look east towards Charlottesville. To the northwest, Harrisonburg can now be located by its glow on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the same is true of Waynesboro to the southwest.

The intensity of lights from highly developed areas not only obliterates the sky; it has also made the night itself less dark. I can look out the window, even on moonless nights, and see my husband’s truck in the driveway, as well as the driveway itself! Does any of this matter? Yes, it does, and not only to astronomers trying to view the universe. Night-flying migrating birds need to see the stars in order to navigate to their destinations.

We’ve evolved within a 24-hour rhythm of light and darkness. Mess up that rhythm, and you mess up your bodily life functions right along with it. It’s the reason we have problems adjusting our sleep/wake cycle to other locations when we travel long distances by plane. 

Animals (and plants) are affected by the number of hours of light they get each day. Birds that should be sleeping (all organisms must rest their bodies) stay awake most of the night if they reside in an area with bright lights. I’d always been perplexed by reports of mockingbirds and robins singing all night in developed areas, as this situation didn’t make sense and didn’t agree with my decades of relatively quiet, dark country nights.

Then, one evening many years ago, we visited my father-in-law who had taken ill and was at Augusta Medical Center in Fishersville. As we walked towards the entrance, we had the very strange experience of hearing birds chattering away in the tress that lined the brightly lit sidewalk!

Such birds probably have shortened life spans, just as humans do who spend their lives shortchanged of the requisite number of hours of rest. For night-flying insects, the problem is more severe, with death coming much sooner because of the lights that attract them.

I’ve been writing for years about insects disappearing, and now scientists have found this to be true around the world. They may feel unsure of the cause, but there is no doubt in my mind that the biggest factor is manmade lighting. [See a map of city night lights of the United States, taken from space, at www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2712986388]

Abundant night lighting is ubiquitous in the developed world and people don’t think about its consequences, nor do they often care even when they are told how deadly it is to insects—the animals that play the biggest roles in making the Earth habitable for us. The worst aspect of this situation is that so much lighting is excessive and unnecessary.

Parking lots often have at least twice as many light poles than needed for safety. Immensely bright lights at gas stations, and outside restaurants and other businesses, add to the killing glow. Small towns emulate the bigger ones; drive through Crozet at night and the main thoroughfare is bright as day.

And then there are the lights left on all night around homes, and sometimes even barns! Leaving a light on at home occasionally because someone will be arriving after dark makes sense, but often, lights simply burn all night long, night after night.

Insect and spider numbers have dropped precipitously over the past few years. The rainy 2018 season didn’t help. Many insects died and those that didn’t had trouble reproducing.

Consequently, many species of birds last year were not able to nest as many times as usual, and some nestlings died due to a lack of protein and fat they can get only from arthropods. If birds are struggling, you can bet that lizards and salamanders are struggling, along with the animals dependent upon all of these creatures for sustenance.

We cannot afford to treat the dearth of insects and other wildlife the way we have climate change—by not acknowledging it until we face serious crises, such as food shortages. We must start shutting the lights off now.

The obscuration of the night sky by light pollution makes folks lose their perspective, distorting their sense of place in the universe. Perhaps that explains the focus nowadays on everything human.

My book, The Nature-friendly Garden, explained the necessity and benefits of having wildlife in our gardens. The same goes for this country and the entire Earth, the most significant object in the whole universe—that is, until enough wildlife disappears. Because then, we, too, disappear. 

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Dark Skies

Another Form of Bigotry-Human Prejudice Against Wildlife

©Marlene A. Condon

March 5, 2019

When you put out unsecured trash cans, you are responsible for enticing wildlife to create messes. Even worse, you endanger it, because animals sometimes swallow food-scented plastic, which clogs their intestines. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Bigotry does not apply just to people’s attitudes towards other people. Defined by Merriam-Webster as “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices,” it certainly has a valid connection to the way folks tend to view certain kinds of wildlife.

Although society may still have a long way to go as regards addressing the many forms of prejudice exhibited over the eons by humans towards one another, it can still be said that we’ve come a long way from days of yore. Not so for our attitudes towards wildlife.

The generally accepted negative attitudes towards such animals as rats, bats, coyotes, and raccoons is exemplified by the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries. No wildlife agency should ever refer to the critters under its watch as “nuisance” animals. Such language further solidifies the bad feelings citizens already hold towards them.

Of course, DGIF is not the only party guilty of implanting unfavorable attitudes about wildlife. We ended 2018 and began 2019 with a local publication writing about rats on the Downtown [Charlottesville] Mall.

The writer made sure to point out that “the term for a group of rats is ‘mischief’,” which was news to me. In all my years of reading and talking with folks, I have never heard anyone use this term, which the writer undoubtedly employed to remind readers that she was speaking of animals likely to cause us trouble. Is this true? Not necessarily.

In real life, wildlife is not much different from the cats and dogs that people most often choose to make their pets. I know, because I had a pet rat when I was young, and he was quite companionable. He was a pretty, black-and-white lab rat that my father found for sale at a pet shop. I already owned white mice (also of the kind used for lab work, I am sad to say), so I guess my father figured I would enjoy a new addition to my menagerie—and I did!

My rat was named Melvin, the name of a friend of my oldest brother, but I don’t really recall now where his moniker came from. What I do remember explicitly is Melvin walking up my arms and onto my shoulders, and never once biting me while being handled.

He was not at all fearsome, and here was the value in my having been given mice and a rat when I was a child: I learned that there was no reason to fear rodents, despite the cartoons that so often depicted people (especially women) up on chairs screaming as a harmless little mouse ran around on the floor. Can you see the silliness of fearing mice to that extent?

But what about rats that are deeply despised in our society? The truth is that they get a bad rap from unusual events that garner biased publicity, and because they can carry diseases to people who attract them with their garbage. 

In the previously mentioned article about Charlottesville Downtown Mall rats, the reporter pointed out that, in a “very unscientific survey” [her words, not mine], “[c]ommonly mentioned problem areas include restaurant patios, tree grates, and garbage pick-up sites.” She didn’t point out that the reason there are rats in these areas is because people view the outside world as a garbage dump.

Sure, it’s an inevitability that folks are going to drop food on the ground near their table when eating outside; accidents happen. But if the person running the restaurant made sure the patio was cleaned at the end of the business day, he or she wouldn’t have rats performing nightly janitorial services. If mall patrons didn’t treat mall grates as unofficial garbage bins, rodents would not be attracted to them either.

As for the official garbage pick-up sites, why not work on reducing the amount of food waste in the first place? It’s a well-known fact that this country throws away an enormous amount of food, much of it from restaurants serving way too much for most people to eat at one sitting. Restaurants don’t need to dispose of more than 50 tons of organic waste every year.(www.turningclockback.com/restaurant-food-waste-facts)

They could offer patrons a choice of meal sizes so each person could order only the amount he knows he’d be able to consume. And when someone asks for mayonnaise, salad dressing, or butter on the side, why does he tend to receive enough for several sandwiches or salads or slices of bread?

The reason it’s so difficult to get folks to implement commonsense suggestions lies in inherent human laziness. It’s a chore to clean inside restaurant premises as required by law; who wants to make the effort to clean the patio outside? When walking along the mall, who wants to bother to carry unwanted food to an official disposal site when you can just throw it into a nearby grate?

When people don’t take responsibility for their actions, our wildlife suffers horribly. The writer of the article on rats suggested a New Year’s Resolution for readers: “Get the city’s rat stats in line with actual rat sightings…when it comes to rats—on the Mall or anywhere else—if you see something, say something.”

I doubt she realizes that she’s advocating for more poisonous bait traps that cause intense agony to animals that don’t deserve to die that way simply because they were doing their job. Yes, rats (and all organisms) have important jobs to do. One of the environmental services provided by these rodents is recycling organic matter back into the soil, ultimately for the benefit of growing plants. If you don’t want rats (and other creatures, such as flies and cockroaches) to perform this task, then people need to do it.

Societal rules must begin to include the demand for composting bins at restaurants and any establishment that sells food. And, of course, individuals need to clean up their act. If you don’t leave waste food lying around, you won’t attract rats and the other organisms that exist to recycle it. It really is quite that simple.

Wildlife shouldn’t be made to suffer inhumane deaths because people don’t live in agreement with nature. It’s time for folks to recognize human prejudice against wildlife for what it is: the last bit of bigotry that has yet to be addressed in society.

Stop falling into the trap of viewing certain animals as “vermin” to be exterminated by government officials or pest-control companies. Look at our world objectively and see wildlife for what it truly is: the cogs in the machine of life that supports mankind. 

The Blue Ridge Naturalist: Another Form of Bigotry— Human Prejudice Against Wildlife

Ecologists Recognizing Value of Alien Plants

 ©Marlene A. Condon
              February 11, 2019
Bees and other kinds of insects obtain nourishment from the blooms of Weigela, a spring-blooming shrub native to Asia. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Scientists are either waking up to what I’ve been saying for years, or finally becoming brave enough to speak out against the widespread invasive-plant movement. In an opinion piece signed by 19 ecologists in the journal Nature, they argue that “policy and management decisions must take into account the positive effects of many invaders.” (www.macalester.edu/~davis/Nature%20Essay.pdf).

Recognizing that “It is impractical to try to restore ecosystems to some ‘rightful’ historical state,” they go on to point out that eradicating or drastically reducing the abundance of invasive plants is “an impossible goal.” 

Critical thinking is a must for deciding invasive-plant policy to avoid harming wildlife and wasting millions in tax dollars. A situation in California illustrates the foolishness of blindly pushing an agenda without giving any thought to the real-world consequences of doing so.

In the name of “saving” the environment from so-called invasive plants, a movement has sprung up to remove Eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus) trees from California. These trees, brought in from Australia, now serve as the most frequented overwintering sites for the western Monarch butterfly population. (milliontrees.me/2013/11/01/monarch-butterflies-in-california-need-eucalyptus-trees-for-their-winter-roost/)

Monarchs originally roosted in native conifer stands of Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata), Monterey Cypress (Cupressus maculatum) and Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempevirens). Sadly, extensive development, logging, and poor land-management decisions have reduced the number of these native-tree stands, leaving the butterflies to rely upon non-native Eucalypts.

Ignoring the fact that overwintering Monarchs are very much dependent upon isolated stands of these trees, government plans are mandating removal of them. Does this make environmental sense? Absolutely not; eradication of the Eucalypts means no wintering habitat for Monarchs, which means they will die. 

In other words, this deliberate destruction of habitat is taking place because of ideology, an illustration of the danger posed by people who have been led to believe they are part of an environmentally moral crusade. Native-plant folks out west have managed, as they have here in the East, to convince environmental organizations and government entities at every level that it is a moral imperative to remove plants deemed invasive.

But, the whole point of conservation of the environment is conservation of wildlife, without which the environment cannot function properly. Yet, absolutely no thought is given to how much so-called invasive plants support wildlife or serve important environmental functions in degraded areas. 

Thus, for example, in the city of Waynesboro, the Parks and Rec department decided it had to remove Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica, formerly known as Polygonum cuspidatum) from growing along the South River greenway (Waynesboro News Virginian, March 9, 2018, “War on Weeds”). The main reason given for the removal of these plants was that they are preventing native plants from growing, but this statement is nothing more than invasive-plant folklore that gains credence by the act of repetition.

Read about virtually any “invasive” species and you will find that these plants are typically growing in disturbed areas where man or a weather event destroyed the original soil profile. As a result, the plants that had been growing there previously did not come back because they could not handle the altered physical conditions of the site. It’s why you see so-called invasive plants mainly along roadways, in parks, and along river trails—all areas easily seen by people who then mistakenly believe the exotic plants pushed out native species.

The newspaper stated that knotweed is a “formidable culprit to the river’s health,” but the true threat lies in its removal. This plant has superbly performed erosion control of soil in which native plants struggle to grow, feeds numerous kinds of pollinators when it blooms, and provides wonderful cover and nesting sites for numerous species of birds and the non-herbivorous insects that feed them. One need only to walk the trail with open eyes and an open mind to ascertain the truth of this statement.

Additionally, park employees would use herbicides to kill the knotweed. How can poisoning the Earth be less harmful than allowing alien plants to grow in areas where they are currently the most suited to thrive and thus provide badly needed habitat for wildlife? 

You might wonder how the invasive-plant movement became so entrenched in environmental and governmental circles. The answer lies in the treatment of it as a moral cause in which those who agree with removing “bad” plants are virtuous; those who disagree must be bad like the plants themselves. Under these circumstances, it is difficult for folks to take a stand in opposition; no one wants to be considered immoral.

However, this undertaking is deeply flawed. Rather than critically analyzing each situation and dealing with it in the most appropriate manner, plant nativists (people who practice a policy of favoring native plants over nonnative) take the approach that demands removal of every plant designated as “invasive,” no matter what function it is fulfilling in the local environment or how well it fills what would be an otherwise empty ecological niche.

Earlier this year, for example, someone removed a Leatherleaf Mahonia (Mahonia bealei) that was growing in a swath of red dirt along the road where I exercise. It was one of the few plants that had survived the highway department’s installation of a new guardrail. No native plants had been able to grow in the poor, dry soil exposed a few years earlier by construction, leaving an area several feet wide and long mostly devoid of plants to assist wildlife.

The Mahonia (a native of China) would have provided a very early source of nectar desperately needed by the first pollinators to become active in spring at a time when native plants in bloom are very few. Its fruits would later feed birds, such as Cedar Waxwings and American Robins. Now, not much exists in this area to feed either insects or birds, making the land a wasted resource.

Native or not, plants provide habitat, whereas bare ground does not. Nativists disregard the reality that native plants struggle to survive under the adverse conditions of road salt, mowing, drought, and disturbed, compacted and depleted soil. They would do better by the environment if, instead of pulling and pesticiding, they focused on eliminating the actual causes of alien-plant spread. 

Removing the Mahonia near the bridge resulted in no benefit to the environment, whereas it very much negatively impacted ease of survival for many insects and birds. And in California, removing Eucalypts may well doom the wintering Monarch butterfly population. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Ecologists Recognizing Value of Alien Plants

The Future is Now: People Submit to Computers

©Marlene A. Condon
January 4, 2018

Futurists (people who make predictions about the future based upon current trends, especially with regards to technology) often suggest that machines will eventually take over the world. They typically see machines as somehow attaining the ability to think and act of their own accord, ignoring—if they so desire—the commands of people.
The futurists are right about machines taking over, but it will not happen because of innate intelligence on the part of computers. It will happen (and is happening already) because people put so much faith into the competence of computers that they are extremely unlikely to contradict these machines.
Last year I had the misfortune of having to replace my washing machine and a heat pump. Despite having spent way more money than I would have liked, I encountered months-long problems with these appliances, each of which depends upon a computer for proper functioning (an idea I dislike intensely).
Each computer informed the technicians that certain components needed to be replaced, which they dutifully took care of without question. Yet the original problem persisted. Following months of basically refurbishing my two brand-new pieces of equipment, I insisted that the computers had to be the problem. I could not believe what a hard sell this idea was!
People so believe in the infallibility of computers—even though they are no better than the people who make and program them, not all of whom possess enough skill to do a good job—that no one wanted to accept that they could be spewing incorrect diagnoses! But, yes, they were.
Once the computer was replaced in my heat pump system, it worked fine. However, even after the computer was replaced in the washing machine, it continued to put out error messages later found to be incorrect. In the end, the manufacturer had to replace the entire machine for me.
Do you think that after this experience I would want to place my life solely under the control of a computer? Absolutely not. What I witnessed was several perfectly capable technicians doubting their own competence and refusing to make their own informed decisions because of the supposed superiority of a machine.
Indeed, kowtowing to computers can be very dangerous. On May 19, 2017, the “man who saved the world” died at his home in Moscow with little fanfare. Yet if this Soviet military officer of the Cold War era hadn’t had the courage of his convictions, nuclear war could have ensued.
During the early hours of September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov’s computers identified five U.S. missiles headed towards Moscow. Mr. Petrov had only twenty minutes to act. Based upon my local experience, I believe most, if not all, people in his position would have warned the military of an impending nuclear attack. Instead, this man—unafraid to use his own intelligence—informed his superiors of a system malfunction.
In a 2013 interview with the BBC’s Russian service, he said that he had all of the data to suggest an ongoing missile attack, and if he had sent his report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it. “The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word ‘launch’ on it.”
An investigation later found that Soviet satellites had misidentified sunlight reflecting off clouds for intercontinental ballistic missile engines. In 1999 Mr. Petrov told The Washington Post that he did not rush to start a war because “We needed to understand, ‘What’s next?’” His gut feeling was that people don’t start a war with only five missiles. The New York Times reported that he said his decision to stand down was at best, a “50-50 guess.”
But Stanislav Petrov employed common-sense analysis, undoubtedly saving the world from a catastrophe. How sad that the death of such a brave man should have received so little notice, the significance of his decision basically unrecognized and underappreciated.
While life-and-death decisions do not comprise most situations, the inability of people to act because of their reticence to contradict a computer certainly results in time and money wasted for everyone involved. It can also result in serious consequences for humans and their environment.
Consider the water situation in Charlottesville at the end of the summer of 2017. On September 30, local news agencies reported that water levels at area reservoirs were lower than normal, but the water authority was not expecting to declare a drought watch. Why weren’t they?
After all, the director of the state climatology office at the University of Virginia had reported below-normal precipitation since May, and area temperatures had been above normal for much of September. It would be surprising if these two factors did not produce drought conditions, and indeed, they had.
Because I get my water from a well, I worry about groundwater when drought is threatening. Therefore, I had been keeping an eye on the streams in my area, and I witnessed one after another drying up. I wondered why no authorities were discussing the drought we were so obviously experiencing, and instituting water-conservation measures.
When the stream at the end of my road dried up on September 29, something that I had not ever seen happen until the serious drought of 2002, I knew groundwater was in poor shape. Finally, on October 5, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) issued a drought warning. Why were they so slow to get folks to limit their water usage?
A major reason is that people today have somehow been made to feel inadequate when it comes to using their own reasoning ability. Thus, numerous straightforward decisions that governmental agencies should determine for themselves are instead farmed out to “experts” who, it is presumed, are better equipped to make them.
Hence, the RWSA, instead of sending someone out to look at streams to see what was happening, instead paid a contractor to run a computer model to predict a probability of a shortage of local water. (dailyprogress.com/news/local/water-levels-are-low-but-drought-watch-not-expected/article_e196c0da-a639-11e7-910c-9b50322f67c0.html)
However, a computer program is not better able to indicate the likelihood of drought than simple observation of local conditions.
We have been deluded into thinking that computers are infallible, and our naivete leads us to make our lives ever more dependent upon them. When I am exercising, I commonly get asked for directions from deliverymen because their GPS device has led them astray. This would never happen if they relied on a good old-fashioned map, which many younger people no longer even know how to read.
Therein lies the real danger of entrusting computers to take care of so many things in life. When they fail, people are helpless.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: The Future is Now: People Submit to Computers

“Look Deep into Nature and You Will Understand Everything” (Albert Einstein)

©Marlene A. Condon

January 4, 2019
After a raccoon kit fell out of a nest box located on a radio tower in the author’s yard, its mama had to work against gravity to carry it about 30 feet straight up—an arduous task, indeed! Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

When I wrote my book in 2005, I mentioned that no matter how many precautions you took, you would get scratches, and I dutifully pointed out how important it was to keep tetanus shots up to date and to clean your wounds with soap and water. However, I did not dutifully mention applying antibiotic ointment to them. 

When my editor read this section, he called to ask why I hadn’t suggested using these ointments that are so widely recommended for cuts. I told him that when washing with soap and water was not possible, or my cut not serious enough to make me take the time to get into the house to wash it, I had always applied my saliva to the broken and bleeding skin instead. I had never gotten an infection in all my decades of gardening, so I had never personally found the use of antibiotics to be necessary.

I explained that during my life, I had observed numerous kinds of mammals. I’d noticed that when an animal had a wound, it licked it—sometimes a lot—suggesting to me that saliva must have antibiotic properties. Just as form follows function in architecture and animal anatomy, I realized that in life, behavior follows necessity.

Wild animals, like humans, get hurt, but unlike humans who have salves they can apply, wild animals need a way to help their injuries to heal without infection. It was obvious to me that because wild animals do not waste energy (every behavior can and must be explained in terms of benefit to the organism), they would lick their wounds only if it were beneficial. I saw no reason why that rule of thumb would not also apply to me when I suffered a superficial cut.

My editor found this fascinating. It made sense to him, and he pushed very hard for me to include this information in the book. However, I demurred. Knowing how litigious our society had become, the lawyer in me thought better of making any recommendations regarding human health without an official study to back me, even though the scientist in me knew I must be right.

Indeed, just two years after my book was published in 2006, researchers in the Netherlands confirmed what I’d told my editor, and went even farther than I did:

“A report by scientists from The Netherlands identifies a compound in human saliva that greatly speeds wound healing. This research may offer hope to people suffering from chronic wounds related to diabetes and other disorders, as well as traumatic injuries and burns. In addition, because the compounds can be mass produced, they have the potential to become as common as antibiotic creams and rubbing alcohol.” [Licking Your Wounds: Scientists Isolate Compound In Human Saliva That Speeds Wound Healing] sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/ 080723094841.htm

I wasn’t surprised by these findings. For man to have survived on this planet for as long as he has, I would expect the human body to be able to heal itself, at least to some degree, when a person emulates wild-mammal behavior that results in healing. By living in close association with nature, we can pay attention and thus learn important life lessons that empower us to make wise choices.

I’ve watched many kinds of critters raise their young, and this activity provides valuable mentoring for anyone who’s a parent. Wild animals raise their offspring to be self-sufficient within the timeframe allotted them, and then the young are sent out into the world to make their own way.

Humans should copy this blueprint, but parents do not always properly prepare their young adults to set sail on their life’s journey. Especially in today’s electronic world, children are unlikely to be taught the basics of survival.

Such things as knowing how to grow your own food; how to cook, clean, and sew for yourself; as well as how to behave in human society to keep it functioning properly are critical skills that are no longer viewed as particularly important or essential to life. Yet if our civilization decays into chaos, as so many ancient civilizations have done before us and as currently seems more likely every day, the only thing of value will be your ability to perform the tasks necessary for survival.

One type of behavior you don’t see in the natural world is helicopter parenting. Although a degree of oversight is necessary to prevent your child from getting seriously hurt, some parents stifle their children by hovering over them and denying them any independence. But a degree of self-determination is necessary for youngsters to learn about the trials and tribulations they are likely to experience. 

I once heard a baby animal crying and looked out the window to see a Common Raccoon frantically running around in circles, obviously terrified. I then noticed its mom coming down from the den to rescue her kit that must have fallen out of its home high above the ground. She calmly picked up the little animal in her mouth and, although it was quite an effort, carried it upwards about 30 feet. I’m sure that baby learned a valuable lesson about the necessity of exploring its world in a more cautious manner, as it never again fell out.

Birds can teach us valuable lessons. In many species, males of mated pairs not only help to raise chicks, but also take care of the female as she is incubating. A male Carolina Wren, for example, brings his mate food. A male Eastern Phoebe perches nearby the nest site all day to warn his mate if predators are around and to try to drive them off. Women would do well to find men with these qualities!

Mother Nature is a wonderful teacher, and you can apply her wisdom to your own life by paying attention to what our fellow inhabitants of the planet are doing out there. Best of all, there’s no tuition to attend this school where the learning never ends. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: “Look Deep into Nature and You Will Understand Everything” (Albert Einstein)

In Month of Giving, Give to Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

December 7, 2018
Don’t worry about the sap wells that Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers make on your woody plants. It’s a myth that the shallow holes will kill your trees and shrubs. These winter visitors have been feeding on my plants for almost 33 years! Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Although I stopped participating long ago in the frenzied, commercialized commotion of holiday gift-giving, I think this is a good month in which to suggest that folks consider offering a present to nature. Humans can’t help impacting the natural world as they go about their lives, but folks can certainly adjust many of their activities to impact it less—and that would be a gift to all of us!

It’s crucial to be kind to the planet upon which we live. There’s a lot of talk these days about living on Mars, but does anyone really want to reside where he is a prisoner? You would need to remain inside the “living” quarters, or you would need to inhabit a spacesuit. No fresh air to freely breathe, nor fresh water to drink—it would be recycled from fuel cells, urine, personal hygiene, and by condensing each person’s breath and sweat from the air. 

When you give some thought to how perfectly the Earth is suited to providing us with everything we need to exist, and that it is the only planet available to do that, you can more easily understand why we should take care of it in the best manner possible. To keep the environment working properly, it is imperative that everyone make his property as nature-friendly as possible. 

It’s not difficult to provide wildlife with the same things we need for life: food, water, and shelter. However, you need to look at your landscape as wildlife habitat instead of as a showcase of plants.

Start by considering the amount of lawn you maintain around your home. If you had to stay “out there” 24/7 as our critters do, would it provide you with shelter from the weather, a place to reproduce, food, and water? If it won’t do that for you, it won’t do much for wildlife either. It’s simple to minimize lawn area.

Keep the amount of lawn you use for recreation and as a pathway to walk around the yard, but start considering where you can plant shrubs, trees, and flowers. You do not need to rip out the lawn; you simply need to replace some areas of grass with different kinds of plants, and you can do this at whatever pace suits your available time, abilities, and pocketbook.

Let’s say you want to grow flowers, but you don’t have much experience with gardening. Start with a small area, just a few feet square or a bit larger, and grow “failproof” plants, such as zinnias, marigolds, or cosmos.

These plants sprout easily from seed in sunny areas, are not particularly fussy about soil, and will grow until frost if provided with water (by you or Mother Nature) once a week. All of them are attractive to butterflies and other insect pollinators that fertilize the blooms so they can make seeds for birds (especially American Gold-finches) to eat. 

Ignore the advice often given to “deadhead” (remove the seeds of) these plants to prolong blooming. Plants exist to feed animals, and annuals (plants that live only one growing season) are quite capable of continuing to bloom while in the process of making seeds.

Deadheading wastes your time and partially defeats the whole purpose of growing the plants in the first place, which is to help your local critters. Just be sure to leave the plants standing after frost kills them so that the seeds are available to birds and small mammals throughout the cold months. The plants will also then be able to reseed themselves so you don’t need to make the effort next spring!

Many kinds of shrubs are useful to wildlife and easy to grow and care for. Although there is a big push nowadays for folks to grow only native plants, the reality is that a mix of non-native and native flowers and shrubs works best in today’s changing climate. And when deer numbers are high, it can be almost impossible for most short native plants to accomplish their “mission” of providing for any wildlife other than those hoofed browsers!

I highly recommend native viburnum shrubs because they produce flowers for insects, and fruits for birds and small mammals. However, you will need to protect them from deer with a wire cage if these animals are numerous in your area.

Another, albeit non-native, wonderfully useful shrub for hummingbirds and pollinators of numerous kinds is the Glossy Abelia (Abelia x grandiflora). Drought-tolerant and evergreen, it also provides shelter year-around for a variety of critters.

Trees, on the other hand, should always be native species because there are so many kinds to choose from, and they can be bought at a size that makes them resistant to the ill effects of deer. They are important for butterfly, and especially moth, caterpillars and other kinds of insects that feed upon foliage. It’s best not to plant these trees too close to your house to avoid problems with leaves in the gutter and branches (or even the entire tree) falling on your house when it gets tall.

If your yard is small, stick with trees that are less than, or do not get much more than, 30-40 feet tall. Common Shadbush (Amelanchier arborea) blooms are hugely attractive to bees, with the resulting fruits fed upon by a variety of birds and mammals.

A favorite small-medium tree of mine is the Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboretum). Its spring flowers provide nectar for bees and other insects, as well as hummingbirds. The seeds are taken readily by both Gray Squirrels and American Goldfinches, and in the fall, its leaves turn a bright red (which I love!) or burgundy.

Shrubs and trees of any size are useful for sheltering animals from weather and avian predators (hawks and owls), and they provide nesting sites for mammals and birds.

Lastly, you can provide water for wildlife by simply placing a shallow pan of fresh water on the ground daily, or putting in a little pond. Your wildlife haven is now complete! 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: In Month of Giving, Give to Nature

Garden Insects of North America

 

©Marlene A. Condon

November 2, 2018

 

A honey bee visits a Mahonia shrub, a non-native but extremely valuable food source for insect pollinators as it blooms very early, long before most native plants. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

I was probably eight or nine years old when I started to garden. The first plant I decided to grow in my tiny vegetable plot in the back yard was the radish. I didn’t like radishes, but they were red—my absolute favorite color—so to my way of thinking, it was the obvious choice!

My very first flower garden consisted, like my veggie garden, of just one plant: the stunningly beautiful blue morning glory commonly grown in New England. We had a carport with two support posts on one side, and I planted my seeds there where the vines could grow upwards.

I didn’t encounter “pests,” and I haven’t ever felt that growing plants was a war between me and the natural world. In fact, I have always very successfully gardened without problems, whether I was living in New England, California, or Virginia. But it wasn’t until I lived here that I realized that my own gardening experience seemed to be far different from that of other gardeners.

In 2002 I started giving monthly slide presentations in Shenandoah National Park. I talked about the wonders of nature that I’d found in my yard, from lovely pastel pink-and-yellow moths to adorable bunnies and chipmunks to the birds whose singing is so welcome.

By the end of each program, people were blown away by the fact that I could have an abundance of plants among an abundance of animals. They did not see how that could be possible.

Indeed, three years later when I wrote to Stackpole Books about the need for a book explaining the value of wildlife to gardeners, the nature editor called me up to say the Stackpole gardening editors did not believe it. Once they saw my slides and explanations, however, I immediately got a contract to write my book.

The reality is that you cannot garden without the innumerable kinds of organisms that exist to keep the environment functioning properly. The reason most people think of so many critters as “pests” is that gardeners create an artificial world around them that can’t possibly work right. Some kinds of animals then seemingly become problematic when they try to correct this situation.

Additionally, gardeners usually expect “perfection,” which is not a real-world possibility. Plants exist to feed animals, which means humans must accept that their plants are going to get nibbled. However, they can survive with holes in the leaves or even missing leaves, and even total defoliation! Therefore, it is easier on you to simply learn to live with the realities of gardening outdoors.

The first step to becoming more tolerant of wildlife and gardening successfully is to learn about the animals that share your world. Princeton Press has recently published the second edition of Garden Insects of North America by Whitney Cranshaw and David Shetlar. It’s a heavy book that you might want to give a permanent spot on a table so it will be easier for you to use it.

Containing more than 3000 color photos, it will help you to identify not only insects, but also (despite the title) spiders and mites, as well as other invertebrate species that you might find in your yard and garden. This edition includes expanded sections on pollinators and other flower visitors, predators of plant-eating insects, and insect decomposers (rather than just earthworms) that folks don’t often hear about.

The most compelling reason to purchase this book is that many of the photos are of eggs and the larval (immature) forms of critters that you do not usually find illustrated in guidebooks. Knowledge is power, and if you can know what something is, you are less likely to want to destroy or kill it, “just to be safe.”

Unfortunately, and this is my one complaint about this otherwise extremely useful compendium of information, this book perpetuates the myth that many garden insects and other invertebrates exist solely to harm your plants. Evolutionarily speaking, this notion is illogical.

If animals seriously harm or kill the plants they depend upon for their lives, those plants can’t reproduce to perpetuate their species. Over time, the plants will die out, which means the animals will die out right along with them! To keep this scenario from taking place, predators work to limit plant-eating animals. Therefore, overpopulations signify that your yard is not functioning properly because it obviously does not support the necessary predators.

Every type of plant is represented in this book, from flowers and vegetables to shrubs and trees, and even turfgrass. You locate the critters in sections defined by where you are most likely to spot them, such as on leaves, blooms, shoots, roots, or in the soil.

There’s a glossary near the end, right before the index. It provides explanations for many of the terms used to describe invertebrates as well plants. Thus, if you’re just beginning to learn about these kinds of critters or plant “anatomy,” there is help right at hand.

You can learn a lot by reading this book, rather than just using it as a reference. Looking through the photos, you might spot a critter you’ve seen sometime in the yard and finally discover its name and information about its life.

Or, you can learn about unfamiliar animals. During my many years of growing radishes (I did eventually come to enjoy the taste of them), I never found other critters wanting to eat them. But Garden Insects introduced me to the Radish Root Maggot, the larva of a western fly that feeds on the roots of crucifers, such as turnips and a variety of cabbages in addition to radishes.

An interesting tidbit of info, the significance of which I’m sure was lost on the authors, is that the Radish Root Maggot also feeds on various mustard-family “weeds” (their word, not mine). If folks out west would let those “weeds” grow in their gardens, they would have less competition from maggots for their radishes!

I’m no longer able to garden as much as I would like, but when I did have large food gardens, I always allowed wild flowers and wild grasses to grow among my cultivated plants. I credit this action with my extremely successful gardening endeavors, in which I was able to grow enough fruits and vegetables to eat fresh and give away, as well as to can and freeze for later use.

Consider buying this book (for yourself or another gardener) to learn about the critters that are, or should be, sharing your landscape. I can assure you that a nature-friendly garden works!

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Garden Insects of North America

Peter Brask, My Tribute to a Friend of Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

Three Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus) sleep the day away in (the late) Peter Brask’s living room. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Peter Brask, a decades-long Batesville resident, passed away this September. He had been a close friend as he shared my love of nature in its entirety, although he may have been most fond of birds.

Peter lived as I imagine some folks might think that I live—with doors literally wide open to the out-of-doors and the critters that inhabit it. As a result, he experienced nature as most of us will never experience it, with an intimacy that was hard to imagine.

For example, he knew how much I enjoy observing the Carolina Wrens around my home, so he made sure to invite me over to see the ones nesting in his kitchen. Yes, you read that right. A pair of Carolina Wrens had built their dome-shaped nest inside his kitchen. The female had laid her eggs and the two birds went about their business as if there was nothing unusual about the location of their nest, and in a way, there wasn’t.

Carolina Wrens are fairly comfortable around humans, and often make their nests somewhere around houses, albeit on the outside! There’s a good reason they do this. Wrens and their chicks are more sensitive than most birds to chilly and wet weather, and several spots around houses often provide better shelter from the elements than more-natural locations. If you have a garage and you leave the door open, you may well come home to find this species either trying to nest there during the warm months or sleep overnight during the cold months.

I once made the mistake of leaving my shed door open for just a few minutes on a very cold winter day after getting seeds out of there to fill a bird feeder. My male wren flew inside almost immediately, and it took me many minutes to get him out! Luckily for him, I had already provided shelter boxes on my porch where he and his mate could sleep together (Carolina Wrens stay together year-round).

I found the thought of wrens nesting in Peter’s kitchen to be incredible, but a telephone call from him a few days after I’d visited was even more unbelievable—a Black Rat Snake had come into the house and eaten the wren eggs! The snake had slithered right into Peter’s living quarters and found itself a meal.

You’ve probably seen those signs that some people have placed outside their houses proclaiming that no matter where you have come from, you are welcome in the community. Well, Peter didn’t need one of those signs in his yard. Actions speak louder than words, and his nondiscriminatory welcome extended to all kinds of critters as well as people, which is just as it should be.

Being Peter’s friend meant sharing many more wildlife encounters. One August day he called me up to say he had bats in his living room. No, they were not in the rafters above the living-room ceiling; they were in a corner at the ceiling! He wondered if I could come over to identify them, and of course, I grabbed my camera and drove over there as fast as I legally could.

I got to Peter’s at 12:30 in the afternoon. Sure enough, there were three Little Brown Bats resting at the ceiling in the corner of the room. Peter told me the bats had been entering the room every night for the previous three weeks, and they had started sleeping there during the day about a week prior to my visit. He said he heard them flying around in the darkness the past night, and they settled in for the day about 3:30 a.m. This man knew how I loved details, and he had paid attention so he could report them to me! That is what I call a dear friend, indeed.

Apparently, the bats were content to roost there, because they stayed for several days, going out each evening and coming back early the next morning. Common roosting sites for the Little Brown Bat around and near human structures are more typically on the outside of buildings, often behind shutters, and perhaps most often, inside tree cavities. I suppose Peter’s living room just seemed like a super-sized tree cavity!

You may be thinking Peter must have been a real kook. Obviously his open-door (and window) policy was highly unusual and didn’t follow the norms of societal behavior. And yet, so long as he was happy with living as he did, why should it matter to anyone else?

I personally found his nonconforming behavior a delight. Here was someone who lived in a house (though he often slept outside in a small open shed), but who enjoyed the out-of-doors so much that he didn’t let the boundaries of his home restrict him. Peter Brask lived his life as he saw fit, and you have to admire him for that.

But there was much more to appreciate than his degree of independence. He was every bit as kind to people as he was to wildlife, being quite willing to assist anyone in need of help.

Peter deeply loved and cared about the natural world, and it saddens me greatly that he is gone. There don’t seem to be too many of us left with such an abiding and sincere affection for nature. I certainly feel more alone in this regard with each passing day.

But Peter will always hold a place in my heart, and every summer I will think of him when I see my Touch-me-nots growing. He called them Jewelweed, but I prefer the name that references the manner in which they disperse their seeds—propelling them outwards several feet when the seed pod is touched, whether by a person, an animal, or a nearby plant swaying in the breeze.

After Peter had finished putting in a pond (almost 30 years ago now) at my house, he brought a few Touch-me-not plants (Impatiens capensis) to place near it. Every year more and more plants shot their seeds out, and now, Touch-me-nots surround my home. Their hundreds of late-season blooms feed migrating hummingbirds and late-season insect pollinators.

I’m sure Peter never imagined how much those plants would spread and how much they would help the wildlife I care so very much about. Nor would he have ever realized how much his legacy of Jewelweed would mean to me at his passing, serving as a heart-touching remembrance of a special person who befriended nature and me during his life, and who continues to do so following his death. 

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Peter Brask, My Tribute to a Friend of Nature

Consequences

©Marlene A. Condon

A tick waits patiently on a grass stalk with its front legs out, ready to grab onto any large mammal passing by. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Thought experiments can be extremely useful when making decisions about how to manage the natural world. They can allow us to confidently predict a future outcome within specified parameters by employing knowledge of current, similar situations. 

For example, we know that one of the reasons the deer population exploded in the eastern United States over the past few decades was because the main predators (wolves, cougars) of these hoofed mammals were driven to extinction by humans in this part of the country. We also know that tick numbers increased as a result, along with Lyme Disease. 

By employing this knowledge, we can work through a thought experiment to predict what will happen when the efforts to bring back the American Chestnut (Castanea dentata) have reached fruition. It may make us rethink whether this effort is as good an idea as it might seem.

The American Chestnut, ecologically, culturally, and commercially significant, was infected by an Asian fungus first noticed around the beginning of the 20th century. Within 50 years, chestnut trees from Ontario, Canada (the northern edge of the species’ range) to its southernmost distribution in the eastern United States were virtually gone—the consequence of people’s interest in acquiring exotic plant species, some of which carry pathogens our native plants have no ability to coexist with.

Many organizations and scientists have since worked hard to breed a resistant American Chestnut. For decades, researchers have been crossbreeding a naturally resistant Asian species of chestnut with the American species in the hopes of creating a plant with the American Chestnut qualities that made it so valuable. However, it takes years for these trees to reach sexual maturity, making the entire process very slow, and no trees have been bred of extremely high resistance to the fungus.

But scientists have a new “trick” for improving resistance. American researchers are hoping to bring the American Chestnut back as a genetically modified organism, abbreviated as GMO, a term you may be familiar with. Many food crops are now GMOs, a tinkering with nature that some folks think is great, but which others have concerns about—and with good reason. “Transgenic” organisms (those with the genes of a totally different species within them) could possibly alter the genetic blueprint for others of their kind in the wild, with unknown consequences. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back in.

People tend to dismiss such concerns when they want something, and people want to bring back the American Chestnut. Researchers from the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry have engineered highly blight-resistant saplings by splicing a gene from wheat into the tree’s genome. Wheat and other grasses carry a naturally occurring gene that produces an enzyme that lessens the effects of oxalic acid, the main “weapon” of the fungus infecting our native chestnut.

It may take two to four years for the researchers to obtain permission from U.S. and Canadian regulators to distribute their GMO. If they are successful, their trees would be the first genetically modified organisms released into the wild for the purposes of reintroducing an endangered species. Recent tests have shown their genetically modified trees match or surpass the resistance of Asian trees to the fungus.

However, there will be consequences to bringing back the American Chestnut that people have not considered. Although many folks fall easily into the trap of believing that there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with trying to restore the natural world to a former state, there can be plenty to be concerned about, especially in this case.

Today’s world is not the world of more than a century ago. When the chestnut dominated the forest canopy, it fed billions of Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) with the copious amounts of nuts it produced annually.

According to an 1813 account written by the renowned painter and naturalist, John James Audubon, “The air was literally filled with Pigeons…The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse…” At the end of that day, these now-extinct birds were still flying by in the same numbers—their flight continuing throughout that night and into the next day and the next!

But thanks to humans, the population of Passenger Pigeons went from billions to just one within a hundred years of Mr. Audubon’s experience. A victim of overhunting and deforestation, their numbers dwindled until only Martha, a solitary female in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo, was left (she died on September 1, 1914).

Fred Paillet, a University of Arkansas geoscientist, wonders whether it’s possible for the chestnut to someday be viewed as “invasive”, a problem, he writes, that he “would gladly live with.” [Winter 2010 issue of American Forests magazine] But he obviously hadn’t thought through that sentiment. 

Without the huge numbers of Passenger Pigeons that had coexisted with the American Chestnut, what will become of the superabundance of nuts that every mature chestnut tree will drop every year? They will be eaten by birds (such as jays, crows, and turkeys) and bears, increasing their numbers and making these animals a nuisance when they more frequently cross paths with people who will want more of them killed.

Deer and numerous kinds of rodents will increase in number, but the numbers of snakes (including venomous species) that could limit mouse populations may not increase, thanks to the overabundance of people who are living just about everywhere already, many of whom believe that the only good snake is a dead one. (Put this comment into a search box online and you might be horrified, as I was, to see the videos showing pointless cruel treatment of snakes.)

When folks refuse to coexist with these reptiles, snake populations do not keep pace with rodent populations, leading to a superabundance of mice and the ticks dependent upon them for a part of their life cycle. The ticks can reach adulthood and easily increase in number, thanks to the chestnut-fattened-up deer whose numbers will be virtually unlimited because people refuse to live with the predators that should be here. The associated diseases that ticks carry will then infect many more people than currently occurs.

The reality is that, in the 21st century and beyond, a world teeming with the imposing American Chestnut would be a world all out of whack and upsetting to people. Although it’s easy to fall for the allure of feeling virtuous by trying to recreate the natural world as it once was, that is an impossibility. You should be careful what you wish for, at least if you haven’t first considered the consequences. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Consequences

Is Nature Bothering You?

©Marlene A. Condon

Newly hatched Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs are more colorful (and cuter!) than older nymphs and adults.

Should gardeners think of native plants as thugs when they grow well in their yards? A Kansas butterfly enthusiast wrote an article recounting her experience with Woolly Pipevine (Aristolochia tomentosa), a native Midwestern host plant for the Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar. She wrote that the plant remained limited until its fifteenth year, “when suddenly it began suckering like that other fearsome thug, passion vine.”

This situation exemplifies how folks do not tend to see nature as it is, but rather as they want or expect it to be. Their subjective view typically leads to poor outcomes for the natural world, which matters because nature is our life-support system. Rather than badmouth organisms, people need to accept that they can’t dictate how organisms should behave.

Consider the Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis) and the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys), both of which bother people inside their homes come late summer and fall. These insect species overwinter as adults in their Asian homeland, which means they need to find shelter to get through freezing weather. Transplanted to America (intentionally and unintentionally, respectively), they enter buildings in fall via cracks and crevices around doors, windows, siding, chimneys, etc.

What is the proper way to view these insects that are not here of their own accord, but rather because of humans? It would help people’s psyches immensely if they stopped regarding these bugs as “pests,” as if their intent is to bother humans. Instead, you should learn about these animals and your house—the only way you can figure out how best to deal with the situation logically.

The insects that enter your house in fall are but a few months old, but they will likely discover more about your home than you have taken time to notice during your residency. This situation must change.

You need to seal interior openings around doors and windows, and inspect any location on walls, ceilings, or floors that has been breached for the purposes of electrical, plumbing, or HVAC needs. These places provide a pathway for animals to get in, as well as hot and cold air, which results in higher cooling and heating bills.

(Note: It’s amazing how much cold air you can feel in the winter entering the house from outer-wall outlets! You should put safety plugs into them.) 

If your windows are old, you might consider getting new ones that are better sealed (and more energy efficient). The expense of well-made windows will be offset somewhat by lower energy bills. Using screens on windows, doors, and over vents, and checking the seal around window air conditioner units, is also important.

Yet, no matter how hard you try to seal openings, some of these insects will manage to get inside. You need to accept that this is just the way life is now. It’s really no different from dealing with dust inside your house. No matter how spick-and-span you make your home, you are going to have to clean it again and again.

So, you should deal with this situation in a prudent manner. Your first thought might be to use pesticides, but applying poisons does not qualify as prudent—particularly in this case.

When these insects first arrived in the U.S., no one advised homeowners to employ pesticides against them inside or outside the house. Apparently that advice has changed, undoubtedly in response to people insisting that something had to be done. But utilizing pesticides for these insects is akin to insisting upon receiving antibiotics for a virus infection. It is not only useless, it is harmful.

Pesticides have never been a solution to controlling organisms because the critters eventually become resistant to them. You end up with superbugs, and then the development of super-pesticides that are evermore deadly to living creatures, including humans.

Pesticide applicators place a perimeter of poison on the ground around the outside of your house, which becomes a killing field for a variety of unintended victims that should not be needlessly harmed. It is completely ineffective and a waste of money using it for Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs (the species coming en masse into the house) because they do not crawl around on the ground; they fly to the walls of your home. 

You might have paid for such pesticide applications and thought they were successful because there seemed to be fewer stink bugs this past year. The truth, however, is that Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs had plummeted in number in 2017, thanks to Mother Nature.

These bugs start congregating on home surfaces at the end of August in our area, because that is when nighttime temperatures become cooler. At our house, they tend to start flying into our carport by afternoon. My husband catches them, kills them with a fly swatter, then leaves the carcasses for mammals to eat (all organic matter should be recycled). Gray Squirrels take the stink bugs during the day, and nighttime scavengers clean up bodies left behind.

Ladybugs do not start to enter homes in our area until October. Because they are smaller than stink bugs, they can more easily access your living areas where it’s too warm for them to hibernate. Therefore, you could see them all winter into spring, but you needn’t do anything. With no food and water, the ladybugs die, and you can pick them up as that happens.

Or, if temperatures are above freezing, catch them in a bug box (a small plastic container, which also works for stink bugs) and release the ladybugs outside (just as scientists did back in 1978-1981).

Returning to the Kansas butterfly gardener, she found a substitute for the native pipevine called White-veined Pipevine (Aristolochia fibriata), a plant she considers “really lush and cute!” Native to Argentina and Brazil, it makes seeds, which this Kansas Extension Master Gardener and Native Plant Society member is selling at spring plant sales in her area. Butterfly gardeners “are eager buyers, especially if they’ve not had a spot for its huge sun-loving thuggish cousin.”

I predict this new alien plant species will become yet another addition to the “invasive” plant-species list since it makes viable seeds. Concern about so-called invasive plants has been a huge contributor to herbicide usage in this country, even though herbicides are producing superweeds and killing many, many kinds of animals.

If you feel that nature is bothering you, please deal with the situation in a sensible way. Avoid creating new problems (for example, by bringing in more alien species) and/or use your own muscle power instead of pesticides that do not offer a permanent solution anyway. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Is Nature Bothering You?